This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jae.2411/full">'Journal of Applied Econometrics'</A>, 2014, 29(7), 1164-1182.<P> Changing time series properties of US inflation and economic activity, measured as marginal costs, are modeled within a set of extended Phillips Curve (PC) models. It is shown that...</p></a>

Changing time series properties of US inflation and economic activity are analyzed within a class of extended Phillips Curve (PC) models. First, the misspecification effects of mechanical removal of low frequency movements of these series on posterior inference of a basic PC model are analyzed...

We introduce a Combined Density Nowcasting (CDN) approach to Dynamic Factor Models (DFM) that in a coherent way accounts for time-varying uncertainty of several model and data features in order to provide more accurate and complete density nowcasts. The combination weights are latent random...

This paper presents the R-package <B>MitISEM</B> (mixture of <I>t</I> by importance sampling weighted expectation maximization) which provides an automatic and flexible two-stage method to approximate a non-elliptical target density kernel -- typically a posterior density kernel -- using an adaptive mixture...</i></b>

We investigate the direct connection between the uncertainty related to estimated stable ratios of stock prices and risk and return of two pairs trading strategies: a conditional statistical arbitrage method and an implicit arbitrage one. A simulation-based Bayesian procedure is introduced for...

We develop a method to screen for local cartels. We first test whether there is statistical evidence of clustering of outlets that score high on some characteristic that is consistent with collusive behavior. If so, we determine in a second step the most suspicious regions where further...

Accurate prediction of risk measures such as Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) requires precise estimation of the tail of the predictive distribution. Two novel concepts are introduced that offer a specific focus on this part of the predictive density: the censored posterior, a...

This discussion paper resulted in a chapter in: (K. Bocker (Ed.)) 'Rethinking Risk Measurement and Reporting - Volume II: Examples and Applications from Finance', 2010, London: Riskbooks.<P> This paper proposes an up-to-date review of estimation strategies available for the Bayesian inference of...</p>

Divergent priors are improper when defined on unbounded supports. Bartlett's paradox has been taken to imply that using improper priors results in ill-defined Bayes factors, preventing model comparison by posterior probabilities. However many improper priors have attractive properties that...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Computational Statistics & Data Analysis</I> (2012). Vol. 56(11), 3398-3414.<p> Strategic choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical...</p></i>